So, I was thinking about the NSA Utah Data Center, which is pretty much advertised everywhere as the most appealing target for all sorts of terrorists, by the NSA. Here are the official stats, as compiled by Wikipedia:

The planned structure provides 1 to 1.5 million square feet,[16][17][18] with 100,000 square feet of data center space and more than 900,000 square feet of technical support and administrative space.[5][16] It is projected to cost $1.5-2 billion.[3][19][20][5][16] A report suggested that it will cost another $2 billion for hardware, software, and maintenance.[16] The completed facility is expected to require 65 megawatts of electricity, costing about $40 million per year.[5][16] The facility is expected to use 1.7 million gallons (6500 tons) of water per day.[21] An article by Forbes estimates the storage capacity as between 3 and 12 exabytes in the near term, based on analysis of unclassified blueprints, but mentions Moore's Law, meaning that advances in technology could be expected to increase the capacity by orders of magnitude in the coming years.[2]

You can check out the sources on your own. Obviously the NSA's job is to lie and mislead people about the USA's surveillance capabilities, so take all those figures with a grain of salt.

The compound is obviously target #1 for a whole host of terrorist types, not to mention other countries. Since information is the key to power, and that's where they keep all the information, anyone who wants to undermine US hegemony - Islamic fundies, communist haters, Chinese/Russian nationalists, etc - would like to destroy it. Right-wing domestic terrorists who hate a strong centralized government would obviously like to destroy it. Christian fundies who fear the "number of the beast" type tracking might want to destroy it. Left-wing, Earth First, ELF-type terrorists would obviously want to destroy it. Pretty much every citizen of the United States would be relieved if it were destroyed, since all our search histories are on there and Jesus fuck, we don't want anyone knowing that shit! And there the NSA Utah Data Center is, sitting out there in the middle of the desert with a bunch of employees, waiting to be destroyed.

So, I got to thinking about that, and remembered one of Carl Sagan's books, "Contact." Sagan worked for several big public projects for the US government, most famously the Voyager spacecraft. He knew how the US government, and governments in general, worked. To summarize the plot, the US and Soviet governments both build giant, expensive machines using instructions beamed to Earth from outer space. The Soviet one falls apart, because of communism; the US one gets blown up, because of terrorism. But then, the protagonist finds out that there is a super secret third machine, built by a private corporation, hidden on an island in northern Japan. That's the one that eventually works. The key line is (I'm paraphrasing, because my memory sucks), "When it comes to giant public works projects, why build one super expensive machine when you can build two?"

So, I keep thinking that the NSA Utah Data Center must be a dummy. I mean, sure, information is probably stored there, but there's got to be a second one somewhere else. Any thoughts on where it might be? I'm going to guess Adak Island in Alaska, because why not. Anyone else?

"4 cylinder Camaro=communism" El Presidente

"You can smoke salmon but it's not quite the same as smoking heroin." nanuq

By "obviously," I mean, "I can't prove it, but doesn't that make sense in the context of conspiracy theorizing?" I'd have edited some of those "obviously"s out, and replaced them with better words, but, well, you know…. editing.

"4 cylinder Camaro=communism" El Presidente

"You can smoke salmon but it's not quite the same as smoking heroin." nanuq

Probably none of that scale. Construction of such a facility is a huge undertaking, it takes many specialized people and just lots of people and equipment overall.

Perhaps the Utah data center is a switch board. Interweb datas go there and then get routed off to numerous storage sites around the world. Data storage sites are fairly innocuous and easier to build than that beast thing in Utah (It's fucking huge and security is similar to a low security prison, not that i've ever been there, nope, no, not ever, i swear). All the big names - google, facebook, apple, etc. - have data farms. These 'farms' have tons of servers that can store many a metric shit-ton of data. In terms of physical size they are roughly the size of a Costco or Walmart. The government could have many similar data farms spread about the country.

Anyway the tinfoil hat types don't have a clue how the gubmint works. It's much slower, dumber, and clumsy than they figure.

The airport was built in 1995 on 34,000 acres. Its construction forced the Stapleton International airport to shut down, although it used more gates and runways than the DIA. The initial cost of construction was 1.7 billion $ but the final project elevated the bill to 4.8 billion: 3.1 BILLION $ over budget. Numerous irregularities have been reported regarding the construction of the site:

Different contractors have been hired for different parts of the airport. They’ve all been fired after their job was done. This lead observers to believe that it was a strategy to make sure nobody had the full scope of the project.

110 million cubic yards of earth have been moved, way more than usually required. This arose suspicion of construction taking place underground.

5300 miles of fiber optics were installed for communications (USA coast to coast is 3000 miles in comparison).

Fueling system that can pump 1000 gallons of jet fuel per minute. This amount is totally absurd for a commercial airport.

Granite imported from all over the world even if the project was already grossly over budget.

Construction of a huge tunnel system (trucks can circulate in them) and underground trains. Most of those aren’t used at the moment.

"4 cylinder Camaro=communism" El Presidente

"You can smoke salmon but it's not quite the same as smoking heroin." nanuq

nowonmai wrote:3 days no post. This place isn't dead. It's got alzheimers.

I was actually rather impressed that you all hadn't come back to the BFC to gloat, or at least lurk…. I was never able to go more than a few days. But here you are, keeping track of the daily post count. Took me a week to notice, which makes me feel pretty good about myself. Maybe I can make it two weeks next time!

"4 cylinder Camaro=communism" El Presidente

"You can smoke salmon but it's not quite the same as smoking heroin." nanuq

nowonmai wrote:3 days no post. This place isn't dead. It's got alzheimers.

I was actually rather impressed that you all hadn't come back to the BFC to gloat, or at least lurk…. I was never able to go more than a few days. But here you are, keeping track of the daily post count. Took me a week to notice, which makes me feel pretty good about myself. Maybe I can make it two weeks next time!

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